1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a braille printing apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus that uses non-impact printing technology to produce printed braille materials.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Braille is printed as a series of raised dots on paper in which each character is represented as a dot pattern in a grid three dots high and two dots wide, forming the basic braille written unit that is read by touch. Special braille writers, braille typewriters and the like are used to write braille. Braille is printed using a zinc printing plate in which character dot impressions are produced and the plate is then pressed onto the paper.
FIG. 3 shows the arrangement of a conventional braille printing system. A computer 1 is used to scan the text and graphic information of a document, the information is subjected to processing, editing and so forth, and a typesetting machine is then used to produce a printing plate 4 from a zinc plate 3. The plate 4 is then pressed onto the surface of the paper 5 to produce the printed braille material 6.
Among the drawbacks of this technique are that it cannot be used to produce large amounts of printed braille materials in a short time, and high-speed, large-scale duplication of the braille materials is also impossible. A further problem is that each time someone wishes to borrow a braille publication from a braille lending library, a new copy of the publication has to be prepared from the original plates or the publication has to be loaned out in the form of a specially-prepared audio recording.
The use of non-impact printing would of course enable such materials to be produced in large quantities and at high speed. However, the drawback with conventional non-impact printing methods has been the low height of the print, rendering it unfeasible for braille applications.